Friday, September 23, 2011

FUD Buster Friday #69: Is Confusion, Anxiety and Denial (CAD) the same as FUD

At the Entrepreneur Magazine conference, titled Winning Strategies, this week in Miami Beach it was obvious no one wanted to use the term FUD. It must be because tech people use it way too often I guess.

But maybe it's because FUD by itself is an acronym and although it's hard to live in IT without acronyms, similar to the medical field, the average marketer and entrepreneur just doesn't speak that way.

They have their own TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) but really they don't deal with IT at all. They outsource it, Cloud it, Freesource it or what ever they can so the ideas and the offerings are the focused point, not the technology they use. I imagine if we were in Palo Alto or some similar place this would not be the case as technology leads those discussions more often.

So do they have FUD? Not exactly. Sure they have competition, we all do, but the competition usually cares about themselves more and can not waste their time focused on the other people or solutions. Staying focused is important, in fact it is probably the best thing one can do for themselves, their businesses and their lives.

So in this Social Business Media Web 2.0 world, the BS does get found faster and easier than it did a few years ago. It doesn't always go away but at least there are more people raising their voices
to be heard. This is what we saw as a potential 20 years ago when we saw Lotus Notes. The ability for anyone to leverage information and share it accordingly without fear, well usually, of repercussion.

Entrepreneurs have no fear, else they would be working for someone else. They do have anxiety about everything in their company. It's their name, their product, their goodwill.

Entrepreneurs have no uncertainty in their lives, they KNOW what they want to do or be doing. They do have confusion. Sometimes bad but often times for the good. Confusion makes one step back and refocus or sharpen what is vague or not good enough.

Entrepreneurs who believe in themselves and their business have no doubts. They may live in denial about how they made it or grow their business or how much better they are because they turned down buyout offers.

In the end, FUD, that you create on your own against yourself or is thrown at you from others is really not important to your mission and goals. Of course if your mission is to make the competition look bad, at least honest, then go do what must be done but do it honestly and openly on your end.

CAD is another level and when you are the size of HP, IBM, Dell, Microsoft or Google it's the professional league, not college. CAD may be a better way, to some it is semantics, but to others it is a way of life.

Thank you to the 300 or so people that attended the event the other day for reminding me that the IT bubble really is not all there is to think about in life.